EDITING WORKFLOW AND BEST

PRACTICES
Level Up Your TikTok Ad Game: Proven Editing Techniques
 Topics covered in order:

1. Communication 9. nvm
2. Editing Brief Explanation 10. Visual Effects
3. Editing Mindset 11. Sound Effects/Songs
4. Project Settings 12. Text/Captions
5. Talking Head Clips 13. Exporting/Delivery
6. B-roll Clips 14. Internal Revisions
7. Stock Footage 15. External Revisions
8. Pacing 16. Alternative Sizing
 Communication

We use Slack Messenger for daily communication.

All messages should occur in your designated Slack channel, ex: Video-editing-Jared

Availability:

We expect you to be online on Slack during regular work hours (10:00 am - 6:00 pm UTC +0),
unless specifically agreed on a time schedule.
Example slack channel
Please respond to pings, mentions, or messages related to your project in a timely manner.

Each new conversation should take place in its own thread, we prefer to limit the amount of
new threads created to ensure streamlined and smooth communication.

Project delivery and revisions:

Projects should be delivered within 2-3 hours from confirmed availability.

Upon delivery, you will be given same-day or next-day feedback, we expect you to reserve
time within this window to tackle all comments and communicate with team leads in a
timely manner in regards to any questions.
 Edit brief
At the start of every project you will be given an editing brief that
includes the ad scripts

Note that there is an editor’s note column that may have special
instructions for you to do for the video.

Each ad script includes 3 hooks and 1 body. Which means there

should be 3 ads that come out of every script.

You will initially start your project by working on the hook 1 variation
ONLY + body of script.
When editing, If you notice a video lacks engaging content or requires
additional elements like b-roll, please bring it to our attention for
improvement.
 Editing Mindset

Our goal is to make scroll stopping ads that engage the viewer
throughout the video and drive the sale to the brand’s product,
while also having that ad have a native feel to the social media
platform.

This also means your videos shouldn’t have slow/unengaging

visuals or extreme crazy visual effects unless told otherwise.

Please aim to be proactive and learn from our feedback to avoid

repeating mistakes in future videos. Additionally, use your
creativity and expertise to enhance video quality. If you notice a
video lacks engaging content or requires additional elements like
b-roll,

Here are examples of our best work that you should always try to
match the quality or do even better.

Our work
 Project Settings

Your project settings will always start off in 9x16 (1080x1920), we

refer to this as “Tiktok sizing”.

Then after the client or team has given final approval of the videos,
we also provide an alternative sizing of the video that is 4x5
(1080x1350), we refer to this as “Meta sizing”. Tiktok sizing

The framerate of the timeline will be 30 FPS.

Always follow these project settings unless told otherwise.

There will be certain small cases where you will receive footage
from a creator that is in HDR color space so it will look overexposed
in your timeline. For those cases, watch this tutorial on how to fix
that.

Meta sizing
 Talking Head Clips and Voiceovers

When cutting talking head clips/voice clips make sure to

remove any silent spaces before and after the creator is
speaking.

We always want to have the creator speaking in the audio of the

video with no dead spaces in between to keep the viewer
engaged.

Take a look at the video example, specifically at the “before”

video. This is a great example on successfully chopping down
the creators talking head footage with no dead spaces.
 B-roll clips
Each line of voice will have corresponding B-roll clips you can use to bring out the
best of a script. Videos should use a new visual or “cut” every 1-2 seconds as
needed.

Whenever the creator is speaking, try to match whatever they are saying to relevant
b-roll if available. We want to “Show don’t tell”.

The script should help guide you with what b-roll to use and when to add but if there
is an opportunity where you think a certain section of the video may benefit from
more b-roll and it doesn’t say to add in the script, please add more.

We want to make sure the visuals are always relevant/engaging and we want you to
take ownership over the video and use your creative judgement on this every time
when it comes to B-roll.

So if in the audio if the creator is saying “I had problems sleeping” it would make
sense to show b-roll of the creator laying in bed tossing and turning.
 Stock clips

Whenever there is not enough b-roll footage or highly complex

visuals that are not possible to shoot by a UGC creator, then we
resort to using stock footage for some of the B-roll clips.

The script should link the stock clips you would need to use for the ad.
In the case that the script does not, you are allowed to get stock
footage from pexels.com or envato elements.

Also make sure to pick good stock footage to use for the videos, below
will be a rule of thumb on what is good and bad stock footage.

Good stock:
● Vertical orientation if possible, can also crop horizontal footage
● Wide angle/good framing/good lighting
● High resolution (4k preferred)
● Example of good stock footage
Bad stock:
● Very tight/close up shot/bad framing
● Low resolution/crappy lighting Example ad with stock clips
● Example of bad stock footage
 Pacing

Pacing is one of the most important aspects of our videos. We want

to keep the pacing of these videos relatively fast unless told
otherwise.

A good rule of thumb for pacing is the clips featured in the edit
should be changing every 1-2 seconds.

Or if it doesn't make sense to change the clip when a creator is talking,

then you can do a jump cuts to zoomed in/out clips of creator to
emphasize a certain phrase and keep the viewer engaged.

Example of good pacing

 Visual effects
You will sometimes be asked to do certain visual effects in your ads,
listed below are the most common ones we use:

● Green Screen effect:

○ Tiktok has an effect called “green screen” that masks a
cutout of the person talking on camera so that a
video/photo can play in the background. See an example
of the effect here. The easiest way to do this is to use an Green screen effect
editing program called cap cut . Here is a video tutorial.

● Tiktok reply comment effect:

○ To generate the tiktok reply sticker, use tokcomment.com

Multicut effect
 Songs

When adding songs to your videos, make sure to use songs

that match the mood the video is portraying.

For example: if you are editing a sleep gummy ad, using a chill
smooth song would be appropriate.

Also make sure the the volume level of the song doesn’t
overpower the voice of the creator. We want it to be subtle
background music.

You can find music to use on tiktok commercial free sounds,

youtube studio , envato elements, artlist
Example of chill a Example of a high energy
smooth song for a song for a outdoor apparel
sleep product product
 Text/Captions

Editing Safe zone:

When placing elements on screen, make sure to place it
where it won’t get potentially covered by the icons in the
tiktok/instagram app.

Look at the example picture and make sure to place

elements like text/graphics within the safe zone.

Also make sure when putting text/graphics on screen that

you are not covering the creators face or covering the
actual product.
 Text/Captions part 2
Text styles:
So for any text featured in our social media ads, we want to make sure we
use the text font and text styles that are native to the platform (unless
told otherwise).

Below I will show examples of the different text styles that exist within
tiktok that we usually use:

● Font to always use (unless told otherwise):

Proxima nova semi bold

● White text with black stroke:

make sure to replicate the same black stroke width to what is
found in tiktok. Don’t have it be too thick or too thin. Also don’t
add any drop shadow effect.
White text with black stroke

● Text with white color block:

make sure to replicate the same round corners and the size of
color block background. Download this colorblock text template
and watch this tutorial on how to install. Also watch this video on
how to use the template.

● Text with color blocks:

Text with white colorblock
The color you would usually use are the brand colors of the
client. So if the brand has an orange logo then you would have
an orange colorblock and put white text on top of it

- Make sure to use iphone style emojis whenever adding it to

text. Here is how they look like https://www.iemoji.com/
Text with orange colorblock
 Exporting/Delivery
Make sure when exporting the timeline, the video has the same
settings as the project settings instructed.

Example scenario

Let’s say you just finished making ad 1 hook 1 tiktok version for our
plantpaper.com client on march 7. You would name the video:

“3/7 PlantPaper ad 1.1 9x16 v1”

For external delivery, use this naming convention below:

(Brand name) (Delivery month) (Ad # & hook #) (aspect ratio)

Example naming of an ad batch

 Internal Revisions
Once your initial draft is done, we must do a quality check on the video to make sure it matches our standard and we
will make any revisions with our quality team if it does not.

To make the revision process easy, we use a website called frame.io where you can upload your draft to frame.io and we can
easily make comments on specific timestamps in the video.

You will send this frame link to our slack chat and our quality check team will go in and comment and they will explicitly tell
you when they are done making comments so you can then proceed on modifying the revisions.

Always make sure to upload your draft to a frame link until we explicitly say it is approved for final export. Also make
sure to start a new thread in slack every time a new draft is made.

Once we say it is approved for final export, we will then provide you a google drive folder where you can upload the final
export of the videos and we will present this to the client for approval/revisions .
 Client Revisions

After the video passes our internal quality check, we then deliver the
videos to the client and see if they are approved or need any
revisions.

If the client has revisions, we will tell you what they are and you will
modify the video and reupload it to the same google drive folder we
provided and send a link to it in our slack chat.
 Alternate Sizing

After the client has given final approval of the videos. You will then proceed to
make the alternate sizing of the video which would have a 4x5 (1080x1350)
aspect ratio. We refer to this as “Meta sizing” of the video.

Make sure all text, graphics, elements, end cards are adjusted to fit in the
4x5 format.

After both 9x16 and 4x5 formats are exported. You will create two separate
folders within the google drive folder we give you. One folder will be named
“Tiktok” and you will upload the 9x16 videos here. The other folder will be
named “Meta” and you will upload the 4x5 videos here.